Data quality drawing intense interest in healthcare

As the healthcare field makes the transition to electronic health records, companies in the industry have faced increased pressure to make sure digital data quality is as high as possible to prevent any miscommunication when sharing information between physicians or care providers. According to EHR Intelligence, however, there are concerns in this area.

EHR expert Janice Nicholson explained that there are many different types of health record software on the market, each of which have different ways of looking at data quality and ensuring compliance with the laws governing the field.

To gain an accurate measure of quality of care, doctors should be able to count on uniformity in their patient records. According to the source, this is an issue. Nicholson noted that companies may need more benchmarking information to help determine which areas are acceptable and what needs more work in each particular EHR system.

Advance contributor Sandra Kersten noted that analytics in healthcare is progressing, with providers now able to improve everything from management to financial performance through the manipulation of data. Unless that information is of the highest quality, these programs could remain speculative.